Arrheinous
Well-Known Member
With a bunch of nice SS valves on my pots and coolers I've taken a lot of the heavy work out of brew day. What stands for further optimization (work smart, not hard) is chilling the wort after all is said and down. This thing needs circulation to get the temperature down and so far I've just been beating the big SS spoon I've got into the side of the kettle like a drum while I stir.
What I have now is a 25' copper IWC from my LBHS. I've added an aquarium pump to circulate coolant water and it works very consistently.
1) I could adapt it into Jamil's whirlpooling IWC somehow though I don't want to put the investment into a food-safe liquid pump for now (unless they're cheaper than I expect). Can't think of a way to recirculate that much wort without a pump without breaking physics.
2) The other option would be some kind of stirplate I could straddle the kettle over and use a big old Teflon-coated stirbar like we use over in the lab. But the kettle's SS so maybe that will toy with the action of the magnetic stirring element.
3) I guess a third but more hands on approach would be to stir from above with some kind of drill-based dowel with baffles on it. The IWC doesn't leave a lot of room for something that large though unless I can prop the IWC up on the bazooka screen and get the baffles to rotate below the bottom of the coils.
4) Maybe this is crazy but if you strap a bunch of back massager units to the side of the kettle I assume there will be some sort of micro-agitation going on in the liquid. Ultrasonicators are used to stir up and dissolve samples in the lab I work at so maybe the principle would apply here in getting the wort moving.
What have other people done around here to automate circulation during wort chilling with an IWC?
I'd like to stick with the IWC rather than get a CFC or plate chiller because the ease of sterilization and operation are elegant. Just looking for an option that's less manual.
What I have now is a 25' copper IWC from my LBHS. I've added an aquarium pump to circulate coolant water and it works very consistently.
1) I could adapt it into Jamil's whirlpooling IWC somehow though I don't want to put the investment into a food-safe liquid pump for now (unless they're cheaper than I expect). Can't think of a way to recirculate that much wort without a pump without breaking physics.
2) The other option would be some kind of stirplate I could straddle the kettle over and use a big old Teflon-coated stirbar like we use over in the lab. But the kettle's SS so maybe that will toy with the action of the magnetic stirring element.
3) I guess a third but more hands on approach would be to stir from above with some kind of drill-based dowel with baffles on it. The IWC doesn't leave a lot of room for something that large though unless I can prop the IWC up on the bazooka screen and get the baffles to rotate below the bottom of the coils.
4) Maybe this is crazy but if you strap a bunch of back massager units to the side of the kettle I assume there will be some sort of micro-agitation going on in the liquid. Ultrasonicators are used to stir up and dissolve samples in the lab I work at so maybe the principle would apply here in getting the wort moving.
What have other people done around here to automate circulation during wort chilling with an IWC?
I'd like to stick with the IWC rather than get a CFC or plate chiller because the ease of sterilization and operation are elegant. Just looking for an option that's less manual.